New! Have customers download your content straight to their phone by creating an App for iPhones. iPhone App Training will allow you to create iOS5 apps from scratch. Having a user download your app onto their phone or tablet gives you a direct connection to customers that a traditional website lacks.
Websites are still overwhelmingly aimed at desktop users using a mouse and keyboard. However mobile and tablet use is on the rise and touch screens are starting to replace desktops as the number one way to surf the web. Should web design be targeted at touch screen users?
Breaking all analysts’ predictions, smartphone sales beat sales of PCs in 2010. In 2011 you can add in tablets, netbooks and laptops – the sales of touch-oriented devices has far surpassed traditional mouse and keyboard desktop systems.
As user habits change, so should developers – by ensuring they have up to date web design skills, and thinking about touch-device users when they design. Stay ahead of the trend by taking one of our Web Design Training Courses including the brand new Mobile Web Design Course which provides a best practice toolkit for creating mobile websites.
The boom in native mobile apps - especially games – has led to the development of a wide range of innovative new touch gestures, and as the mobile web becomes more dominant, we will start to see a wider range of touch gestures employed in web sites, as well as in native apps.
We are currently looking for more freelance Android and iOS Mobile Apps trainers. Please contact ali@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk if interested.
In this post we take a closer look at how can web designers design effectively for touch-screen devices – and provide some useful resources… Read the rest of "Touch Gestures in Web Design – The Death of the Mouse?"
Posted by Craig Charley in iPhone Training, Mobile App Development, News, Web Design, Web Design Training on October 12th, 2011| 4 Comments »
writing for mobile
Billions of people are surfing the Web via mobile devices – more than ever before, with new and better tablets and mobiles coming out all the time. If your Web page doesn’t display well on Mobile devices with WiFi then you are missing a trick. All Web Developers should learn how to design for mobile devices including iPhones, smartphones, cellphones, PDAs, and palm-sized computers.
Silicon Beach Training provides Dreamweaver Training, Social Media training, Google Analytics training and SEO training in Sussex. We are also PRINCE2, MSP and ITIL accredited. Please take a look at our PRINCE2 training, ITIL Training and MSP Training courses in Brighton, Sussex.
This post is mainly about text and code, for more advice on other design considerations read Mobile Web Design – What web developers need to know
Top Tips for designing for moblie:
- Use only HTML tags such as: p, br, b, i, blockquote, center, ul, ol, li, images, pre, headers, and simple tables
- do not use frames, layers, imagemaps, Javascript, Java or plugins
- Use an alternative stylesheet that can be used by mobile devices — the very presence of a mobile-specific stylesheet will override all styles from your screen stylesheet, thereby simplifying the presentation of your site.
- Keep your layout small, and avoid clutter
- Be aware of how graphics are displayed
Images for Mobile
Images are not easy to display well on many mobile devices. Whilst most mobile browsers will support images some are not in color, and they will often have low resolution.
Currently many mobile devices have a screen width and height of approximately 150×150 pixels. iPhones and other smartphones are a bit bigger. When devices resize your images to fit that small screen it can result in very poor quality images, or they don’t resize they are too much too big for the screen.
Links for Mobile
Links can be the most important element on the mobile page. Make them easily identifiable. When styling your mobile links, it is good practice to emulate conventional link appearance with an underline, distinguished color, and perhaps a slightly contrasting background colour.
HTML for Mobile
As many mobile devices (excluding smartphones) support a limited version of HTML 3.2 its best to stick with basic layout and formatting tags.
Content for Mobile
Writing good content for mobile is critical. Too much will be difficult to read – too little and you won’t be providing enough information. Decide what is essential. Pages designed for Mobile devices are usually used as a reference and should be straight to the point.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are mobile visitors looking for?
- What information do they want/need?
- Can I reduce sidebar content?
- Which navigational elements are redundant?
- Which stylesheet elements can I do without?
Points to Remember
- Keep your pages small – essential content only
- Navigation should be easy, clear and concise
- Avoid any graphics that are not essential
- Always Test your pages Be sure to test your pages in both smartphones like the iPhone and PDAs.
Posted by Heather Buckley in News, Sales & Marketing, Social Media, Web Design on January 10th, 2011| 2 Comments »
Nadine was delighted to win our Twitter Re-Tweet competition!
At the end of last year we had a fantastic response to our Twitter Re-Tweet competition – the prize was a free place on any of our public training courses.
Our lucky winner was Nadine Burzler (@NadineBurzler) who works at Cactus Language Worldwide.
Nadine was delighted to win the competition and has chosen a free place on our 2-day Dreamweaver course as her prize. She also chose to extend this to come on the whole Web Design Week package, which includes our Web Design training and Web Graphics Photoshop Course.
When she told us why, we realised that there couldn’t have been a more worthy winner…
Read the rest of "Twitter Competition – A Fairytale Winner!"
Posted by Andy Trainer in Competitions, News on January 7th, 2010| No Comments »
